An Open Letter to Alice Goffman

Some undergrads at the New School wrote a critical open letter to Goffman after reading On the Run for a class, and they posted it online. No big deal. It reads like an undergrad paper.

What is surprising, though, is that both Iddo Tavory and Jocelyn Viterna -- big names with no formal connection to the New School or to Goffman -- took time out of their day to write extensive online condemnations of this group of undergrads in the comments section below the open letter.

This is a perfect illustration of how far Goffman's Strange Defenders will go to shut down any and all criticism of a truly bad book.

I am truly troubled by this text. Goffman not only wrote the most important ethnography of poverty and policing in the last decade, but was also deeply enmeshed with the people she wrote of. She was not putting anyone in any danger. She was, however, shedding light on what it means to live under this new regime of surveillance: from the most banal moments, to the most dramatic. I can see few political projects that are more important today.

Positionality is important, yes. But over 10 years of research and of being enmeshed in people's lives, one's "position" becomes more complicated than the writers of this letter seem willing to contemplate. And yes, echoing Viterna, although I truly do not think this was the students' intent, the overall attack on Goffman smacks of sexism of the worst kind. In a world of male ethnographers who do work that is only a fraction as deep or important, she is the one who is attacked. bravo.

I applaud critical reading in any context, but with every new letter or article excoriating Alice Goffman, I am always left to wonder this: why, in a field full of so-called "cowboy ethnographers," is it always/only Alice Goffman who gets singled out for these multiple and harsh critiques? Why is it the woman ethnographer who takes 100% of the heat? In a class on ethnography, would it not be more useful to apply that critical eye to the field of urban ethnography in general, thinking about how to support its strengths and reform its problematic aspects? What is it about a white cis-woman ethnographer who enters a black community that draws such need for public castigation, while white cis-men ethnographers who do the same never seem to generate the same outrage? If your goal with this email is to initiate a transformation in how ethnography is done, I suggest it would be much more powerful to cite multiple instances of problematic ethnography across multiple authors, to show a trend, and then to propose better alternatives for scholars. But instead, you chose to single out Alice Goffman. As such, you implicitly suggest to your audience that it's not a problem that ethnographers in general need to confront, but rather it's only a problem of Alice. Is it your aim to transform problematic ethnographic practices, or is it your aim to punish Goffman? I hope you are willing to turn the same critical eye you used against Goffman to evaluate your own motives in writing this letter, and to ask why you were so willing to call out Goffman, but not others in her field.

Viterna makes a good point, though it should be noted there have been similar critiques against Venkatesh etc--just not with the same fervor as the Goffman affair. Hard to know if that's a time period effect or gender effect though.

Tavory's point that "She was not putting anyone in any danger" is so outrageous that I have lost a bit of respect for him. The only way she didn't put anyone in danger is if you believe she shouldn't be taken at her word in the final scene of the book; and if you believe that, then all you've done is underscored another critical flaw of the work.

Tavory was on faculty at the New School for a few years until not that long ago. I'm not sure of OP's point in claiming no official connection of those two commenters, but they're wrong on that particular point.

Though everyone pointing to AG’s gender is a bit of the ecological fallacy. Yes, women tend to be more heavily criticized, for example, but that doesn’t mean the criticism, of AG is because of her gender. Show me a book that has gotten as much attention as hers. Evicted would be one example but there are key differences: Desmond was actually reflexive about his positionality, he didn’t take people at their word re that’s how things are done but actually followed up, etc

Goffman gets criticism proportionate to the fame and praise she got. I can't think of another ethnography other than Evicted that got this attention. Totally fair to critique it. How can these scholars ignore all the problems pointed out by Lubet and others and just defend Alice? Bravo to the undergrads for thinking critically.

There are black and scholars of color doing much better ethnographic work that receive a fraction of the attention of Goffman. Why? Because instead of another black guy or gal "telling it like it is in the Ghetto" it was a petite white girl from an elite background reporting on life from the "other side of the tracks". That's the appeal.

Neither senior scholar deals with this. They just jump in to play defense. It's silly and blind. Waverly Duck is 10x the ethnographer that AG is. Receives very little attention. Our field is a joke.

"What is it about a white cis-woman ethnographer who enters a black community that draws such need for public castigation, while white cis-men ethnographers who do the same never seem to generate the same outrage? "

middle class/wealthy white people studying poor non-white people is problem with goffman, nothing to do with her gender, she just made it more popular than most white male ethnographers doing the same so she receives a lot more criticism. Look at the heat venketash gets for his ghetto studies, why the fixation on poor black people?

Anyone can study anything. The only thing that matters are the results. Goffman's results are strange and unreliable (to put it as politely as I can). The ad hominem criticisms of her "identity" are a distraction from the very real problems with her work.